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Roy Khalaf

Dr. Roy Khalaf joined LAU as an assistant professor of biology, after completing a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Georgetown University Medical Center.

His research interests revolve around the opportunistic filamentous fungal pathogen, Candida albicans, one of the leading causative agents of death in immunocompromised individuals.

His team is currently working on identifying key genes that confer virulence to this organism. Many of these factors they are currently studying are actually cell wall proteins involved in adhesion and degradation of the host tissue for successful infection. They are currently generating homozygous null mutants by marker cassette recombination and integration and comparing the mutant phenotype to the wild type as far as filamentation ability, antifungal drug resistance, virulence in a mouse model, adhesion to epithelial and endothelial cells, and macrophage interaction. Furthermore, they are typing various C. albicans isolates from Lebanese hospital patients by "MLST and PFGE" PCR amplification and testing the susceptibility of these isolates to novel antifungal drugs in an effort to improve treatment of candidosis and the well-being of these patients.

Selected publications

1. Barada G, R. Basma R, and Khalaf RA. Candida albicans Identification and Genotyping in Lebanese Clinical Isolates Through Microsatellite DNA Polymorphism. Mycopathologia. 2008.165(3):115-25.
2. Hayek P, Dib L, Yazbeck P, Beyrouthy B, Khalaf RA.  Characterization of Hwp2, a Candida albicans GPI anchored cell wall protein necessary for invasive growth.  Microbiological Research 2010 Mar 31; 165(3):250-8.
3. Ramsook C, Tan C, Garcia MC, Fung R, Soybelman G, Henry R, Litewka A, O’meally S, Otoo H.N, Khalaf R.A, Dranginis A, Gaur N.K, Koltz S. A, Rauceo JM, Jue C.K, Lipke P.N.  Yeast Cell Adhesion Molecules Have Functional Amyloid Forming Sequences.  Eukaryotic Cell 2010 Mar; 9(3):393-404.
4. Hashash R, Younes S, Bahnan W, El Koussa J, Maalouf K, Khalaf RA. Charaterization of Pgal, a Candida albicans Cell Wall Protein necessary for proper adhesion and biofilm formation.  Mycoses 2010 Apr 6.

Academic degrees

• Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, 2001, State University of New York at Albany, USA
• M.S. in Molecular Biology, 1997, State University of New York at Albany, USA
• B.S. in Biology, 1993, Haigazian University, Lebanon

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